Proudly announcing: The SHA2017 talk schedule

June 14th 2017

From networking to activism, from makers to scientists and hackers in many disciplines, the SHA2017 program is taking its final awesome shape! From behind piles of sticky notes, after a lot of tough decisions and many, many hours discussing, researching and emailing, we are very proud to announce the SHA2017 conference schedule! There might be some tweaks here and there as we get closer to the event, but you can find the whole schedule here: https://program.sha2017.org

While every talk or workshop is worth seeing, the content team cherrypicked some for you:

Cryptowars 2.0: Lessons from the past, for the present

The inventor of PGP technology, Phil Zimmermann, brings us important lessons from the 90's, where he was front and center in the political struggle over citizen cryptography. Ultimately, he helped "win" that battle in bringing industry in alignment with civil society. Now, with Trump, May and Macron demanding backdoors, we're in the same fight all over again--only with greater urgency. Phil takes us through the old cryptowars with focus and lessons on how to win this time around too.

Resisting Algorithms of Mass Destruction

Big Data is becoming the holy grail for governments looking for immediate savings, future spending control, and saleable assets. Australia decided to go after their most vulnerable citizens in one such attempt, and Lyndsey Jackson fought back--with the Government’s own Drupal distribution! Within a few days after the #notmydebt campaign launched, the policy began to unravel, the debt collectors were pulled back and a Senate inquiry was triggered. Yet, pressure to use such tools is only mounting around the world and Lydsey will share strategies on how to fight back.

Rooting the MikroTik: Can my router play Für Elise and be part of a botnet?

Have you ever wondered how the cheap, seemingly nameless devices in our homes often end up becoming part of worldwide nefarious botnets? In his talk on the MikroTik, security researcher Kirils Solovjovs discusses getting at the Linux operating system running behind layers of obfuscation. Sometimes for hilarious purposes, like making your router play songs, but often for more nefarious purposes, this talk covers the interesting intersection of poorly implemented, cheap, and increasingly ubiquitous network hardware.

Robot Big Brother: The Future of AI in Attacks and Surveillance

How can you protect your privacy when Big Brother has advanced Artificial Intelligence? Peter Eckersley, the Chief Computer Scientist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will show us new types of attacks and surveillance made possible by advances in Artificial Intelligence, along with strategies for the computer security community to protect our privacy from the intelligent machines.

Cutting off a Call Center Con in Calcutta: A Trip to India

What started with a simple scam phone call eventually led to a cybercrime take down in Calcutta! Bart Roos takes us behind the scenes of a call center in India that placed over 5 million calls to Dutch phone numbers, employing 60 people and defrauding millions from Europeans. Gain insight into the social engineering techniques that are used by the scammers and how he and a Dutch TV crew tracked down the call center kingpin.

Hack North Korea:

The Human Rights Foundation will show us how information is currently smuggled into the most closed regime in the world, through a mix of helium-nitrogen balloons, Flash Drives, DVDs, shortwave radio and others. Their planned workshop will help educate and improve current techniques to break the regime’s information monopoly and accelerate the freedom of information.

Digital dissent in Latin America

How do you organize online in places where not everyone is connected and net neutrality never existed? Turns out, lots of ways! Gisela Perez de Acha from Derechos Digitales will discuss iniatives ranging from ciberfeminist collectives to mesh networks and how they inform and protect protest movements in the region.

This is just a small sample of the more than 100 speakers coming to SHA2017.

Workshops will be announced soon. If you need even more content: the list of Self-Organized sessions is growing and various villages are finalizing their programs too!